


Wait -- It Was Backwards???

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst and Smut, Closet Sex, Clothed Sex, Former Friends, Happy Birthday, Smangst, Smut, Weddings, post-undiscovered country
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:00:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26345239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba reunite at Carmen's wedding.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Olivia Benson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 26
Collections: Happy birthday Michelle!





	1. Chapter 1

After the cake cutting, Benson and Barba were too embarrassed to stay at the wedding reception, so they said goodbye to the squad, hugged Carmen and her new husband, handed them envelopes, and headed out to call a cab.

“Together?” Benson asked.

“Sure, together,” Barba said, surprised. “Might be easier this time of night anyway. They can take you home first, and then —”

“You can stay at my place if you’d like.”

“Really? After —”

“After what just happened, dealing with Lucy and Noah will be a breeze.”

Barba let out a laugh, and Benson patted his arm through his suit jacket. She requested a cab on her smartphone’s app, then turned to face her friend. “What were you going to say before?” she asked him. 

“Before when?”

She smirked. He smiled, then tentatively took her hand. Looking directly into her eyes, he said, “I was going to ask if after we resolved what was between us, our “argument” as you called it, if you’d like to continue bickering for a while afterwards."

“Rafa,” she said, “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

“No need to apologize. The only person who should apologize here is me.”

Benson hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder. “You know what?” she said. “I think I’d like to bicker with you for a while.”


	2. Chapter 2

Benson and Barba, who had not seen each other even once in the nineteen months prior to this September evening at a Staten Island reception hall, returned to their table just as Carmen and her new husband were cutting into a six-tiered wedding cake. 

Fin and Rollins were dead silent. Carisi tried to remain quiet and composed, but within seconds, choked on his coffee.

“Looks like a good cake,” Fin said.

“Yep. Can’t wait to try that cake,” Rollins echoed.

Carisi washed down his half-swallowed coffee with a shot of whiskey from the open bar. “To the happy couple!” he shouted suddenly.


	3. Chapter 3

Benson buried her face in Barba’s shoulder, her nose pushing further and further into his collarbone, her back tremulously rising and falling.

Barba wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in even closer. The back of her dress was still fully unzipped. 

“Are you laughing or crying?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know,” she said into his dress shirt. 

“We should, uh.”

“Yeah.” She stood slowly, reaching behind her for the zipper. “Um.” 

Barba buckled his belt and re-knotted his tie. “May I?”

“Sure.”

He zipped up the back of her dress. She could feel his lips precariously close to her skin.

“Wait,” Benson said, a blush creeping up her neck, into her cheeks. “My —”

She touched her upper thighs and Barba’s eyes bugged out of his head as he looked around the storage closet. 

Benson found her underwear resting atop a broom. The black silk bikini briefs had picked up a few cobwebs when Barba flung them against a wall ten or so minutes earlier. She shook the briefs out, but the dust and cobwebs remained.

“I’ll just,” she started to say. “No, wait, my purse is still at the table.”

She shoved the briefs into Barba’s hand, and he tucked them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.


	4. Chapter 4

“You’ve got such a pretty face,” Benson said into Barba’s ear, “but we’re old, you and me, so if you really want to commit to this I’m going to have to turn around so I’m not straddling you.”

Her dark green evening dress was bunched up at her waist, hitched up above her thighs and unzipped and pulled down because Barba had been so eager to mouth at her breasts seconds after they’d ducked into the storage closet to finish off their alleged “unfinished business” from years ago, a champagne-fueled decision fueled, in reality, by only one narrow glass of champagne. 

“Aww, sweetheart,” he said, momentarily forgetting himself. 

She rolled her eyes and whispered, “give it to me, Barba, like you mean it.”

He twitched beneath her. His lips on her neck, he slid a hand between them, then into her folds. “You ready for me?” 

“Yes,” she said, turning around and lowering herself on to him.

Before long, he had one hand on her breast while the other rubbed her furiously. He was pumping in earnest and she was struggling not to moan. 

She did let out a perhaps-too-loud “nggghhh” when she came. The door creaked open.

Barba didn’t notice and grunted out “O-li-vi-aaahhhh,” coming down her thighs, and onto the floor of the storage closet where they’d indelicately decided to work out the last of what was still between them. 

They were both facing the door, Barba half-standing, Benson half-bent-over, clutching the back of a chair in front of her. Benson’s dress and bra were bunched up at her waist, her breasts hanging loose, and there in front of them for a split second stood Benson’s sergeant, senior detective, and ADA. 

Rollins gasped. Fin and Carisi went pale. Fin slammed the door.


	5. Chapter 5

“So where were we that night?” Barba asked, kissing Benson beneath her jawline. “Remind me where we left off.”

“I’m pretty sure you had your head between my thighs when we decided it’d be unethical for us to fuck while we were still working together, and then you didn’t apply for anything outside the DA’s office for the next three years, until you —”

She trailed off when he carefully rolled the bottom of her dress up to her hips, then slid off her underwear, flinging them across the storage closet, landing god-knows-where. He dropped to his knees and picked up exactly where he’d left off. 

He stood again when she let out a “fuck, so good,” that she clearly hadn’t meant to let escape her lips and tugged on his hair, which elicited a pleased grunt from him. “C’mere,” she said, unbuckling his belt and freeing him from his trousers and boxer-briefs, “it’s time to finish this argument once and for all.” 

“Liv,” he said, a hand moving from her breast to her hair.

“Don’t say it,” she warned him. 

She let her lips crash into his and straddled him on top of a storage box, his trousers now around his ankles.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’ll tell you what, then,” she said, leaning against the brick of the reception hall exterior, “let’s find a place, you and me, and we’ll finish off that “argument” once and for all.” 

Barba raised an eyebrow. “You’re not serious.”

“I’m game if you are. You’re the one who said that maybe if we’d just gotten it out of our systems that one night, we wouldn’t hate each other so much.”

“I didn’t use the word “hate.” Did you drive here?”

“No. Did you?”

Barba laughed, which prompted a laugh from Benson too. 

“What about the bathroom?” Barba asked. “Haven’t done that in at least twenty years, but if it’s you, I’m ready.”

“Too much traffic in the bathrooms. There’s a closet underneath the stairs,” Benson said. “Can you be quiet?”

“I can try.”


	7. Chapter 7

Benson followed Barba outside. She could smell the salty air from the beach where the wedding ceremony had taken place at sunset, just a few hours earlier. “I don’t mean to reopen old wounds,” Barba said, “because god knows I’ve done enough of that already. But I think if you and I had been together when we wanted to be, we might have had a natural breakup, as opposed to —”

“As opposed to you saying goodbye to me in the middle of the street after you’d made the second-stupidest decision of your career? As opposed to you cutting me off when you knew I was going to say I love you?”

In the white lights that illuminated the exterior of the reception hall, Benson could see that Barba’s eyes were red. “Are you drunk?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I don’t get _drunk_ , Olivia.”

He blinked. She could see that his eyes were wet. 

“We would not have had a “natural” breakup of any sort,” Benson said, “because regardless of whether or not we got together romantically or otherwise, you’d have destroyed our friendship in exactly the same way.”


	8. Chapter 8

Carmen and her new husband came by their table to say hello. “Rafael, I’m so glad you made it,” she said, hugging her former boss. “I saw you at the ceremony this afternoon but didn’t see you at the cocktail hour. I thought maybe you’d left.”

“I wouldn’t saddle you with a meal you’d already paid for,” he said, winking in her direction. 

“Good. Then you’ll stay for dessert.” 

They dragged Carisi and Rollins out to the dance floor, and Fin shuffled over to the open bar, leaving Benson and Barba alone at the table. 

“Sometimes,” Barba said, staring into his empty glass, “I wonder if you and I had continued our adventures on the couch that one night —”

“Rafa,” she warned.

“I just wonder —”

“It was after your grandmother’s funeral. You were grieving and I was worried about Noah. We had a moment of weakness. We still worked together, and we thought better of it at the last minute. No need to bring that up.”

“Okay. I’m saying that if we had ever been together, we might have had a more natural breakup.”

“What?” she said, a bit too loudly. “If you want to have this conversation, let’s have it outside.”


	9. Chapter 9

A former ADA who was now in private practice in a big rectangular state somewhere in the middle of the country approached their table and made conversation with Barba. It was clear a few exchanges in that the man had no idea of what had transpired nineteen months earlier, and had not read any of the tabloidesque stories about the Baby-Killer Prosecutor in the New York papers. “I’m surprised you haven’t been appointed to the bench yet,” the man said. “Would have thought by now the governor would have been after you.” 

Benson and her squad shifted uncomfortably in their seats while Barba recounted some of the story, without much detail, of his murder trial. “I’m sorry,” he said, patting Barba’s shoulder. “Really, I am. Sounds like McCoy dealt you a shitty hand.”

When the former ADA returned to his table, Barba swallowed hard. “Nice guy,” Carisi said. “Very understanding.”

Barba shrugged. “I don’t deserve his understanding.”

Benson wanted to roll her eyes, but sympathy tugged at her heart. She kept quiet, though, remembering how he’d left her without explanation. His big departure speech had never been an explanation; it unintentionally placed the blame on her for the changes in his character.


	10. Chapter 10

Benson was surprised when, a few minutes after the waiters set out purple-and-green reception hall salads, Barba took the seat next to hers. “I can move if you want,” he said, straightening his tie. "There are always no-shows at these things. I can ask a waiter so I don’t bother Carmen.”

“It’s fine,” Benson said. 

The squad’s conversation fell silent. “I finally moved into the ADA’s office,” Carisi offered at one point, and Barba congratulated him, but said little else. 

“We missed you at the cocktail hour,” Rollins tried.

“I was taking a walk by the boardwalk, lost track of time.”


	11. Chapter 11

Benson and Fin found themselves talking about work in the middle of a cocktail hour at a wedding near the beach on the south shore of Staten Island. They’d both spotted Rafael Barba, the bride’s former boss, at the ceremony, which had taken place on the beach at sunset, and neither of them wanted to talk about Barba. 

“Hey,” Rollins said, approaching her captain and sergeant. She was holding a martini glass filled with layers of stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, and gravy in one hand, a fork in the other. “Thanksgiving in a glass,” she said. “The reception hall’s speciality.”

Carisi joined Rollins, Benson, and Fin near the bar. “Nice spread for a cocktail hour,” he said. “I’m gonna be full by the time they serve dinner. Did you guys see Barba at the ceremony? I woulda missed him if I hadn’t turned around to stretch. He was in the last row. Left before I could say hello to him. I don’t think he was interested in talking to anybody, y’know what I mean? Felt kinda bad for the guy.”

The three others nodded slowly. 

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Old wounds and all. I’m too swamped with the new job to think clearly at weddings.”


End file.
